


Slumber at Dawn

by mary_pseud



Series: Damnatio Memoriae [1]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Aliens, Evacuation, Gen, Nova - Freeform, TARDIS - Freeform, thought absorption
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-11
Updated: 2018-02-11
Packaged: 2019-03-16 23:42:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13646880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mary_pseud/pseuds/mary_pseud
Summary: The Doctor pauses to watch a sunrise, and sees a planet's final dawn.





	Slumber at Dawn

Jamie was tired. The boy was sleeping in his room, and the Doctor didn't want to disturb him.

But he did want, just for a little while, to take a rest himself. So he set the controls of the TARDIS rather freehand, and looked for a pretty sun.

* * *

He opened the door of the TARDIS to pre-dawn twilight and the smell of dust. Outside, the air was clear and a little cool, and the shadow of the TARDIS stood like a long black finger over the short rough-looking ground plants. The Doctor walked around the corner of his machine, and stopped in admiration.

He was on a cliff, and before him was a beautiful rolling range of mountains, and past them the sea. And the red-purple plumes of the rising sun were just starting to glow against the clouds. It looked to be a beautiful sunrise, and the Doctor ambled forward, trying out a few runs on his recorder as he walked.

Behind him, something large and black moved. It heard his music and crept forward on long taloned feet, dragging its belly in the dust as it moved. It approached the TARDIS and touched it gingerly, then started exploring it, wrapping two arms tipped with a single heavy talon apiece around it, then tentatively tracing its corners and windows with the hands that rose out of its fur.

The Doctor turned, and took in this intruder grasping his time machine. "I say!" he snapped. "Let go of that!"

The long arms loosened, and the creature's head appeared. More accurately, the creature's face.

It was several times larger than the Doctor's face, and mottled all over with black spots. It was attached to a body that looked half tarantula, half caterpillar. But it was still recognisable as a face, with a nose and chin and cheeks. The alien blinked large black eyes at him, and said in a rumbling voice, "This is yours?"

"Yes. It is my travelling machine," said the Doctor.

"Ah. And it will take you away from this planet?" asked the intruder, touching the light atop the TARDIS with the tip of one claw.

"Yes."

"Well, you probably should go then. This is not a safe place to be," said the creature, letting go completely and moving several paces away. It, or he, sank back into the dust, and wheezed.

The Doctor came forward, and then paused. He asked, "I am the Doctor. And you are?"

"I am? I am Prime Tho'Po Mnee-Dumun. I am pleased to meet you, Doctor." Tho'Po bowed his heavy head. "And your music is very pretty, too."

"Why did you say I should leave?" asked the Doctor.

Tho'Po pointed at the oncoming sunrise. "Because that sun is going to go nova within the next two thousand beats of my heart, and it would be best if you were not here to see it."

"Nova?" The Doctor turned and noticed again the richness of the reds and purples pouring over the ocean. "So those colours?"

"Are heavy elements being brought to the surface of the sun by internal imbalances, yes. It should be quite a spectacular sunrise, here on Noca Verino. The last one, unfortunately." The giant alien smiled. "It was a beautiful planet. Peaceful, fertile. Then the scientists discovered the sun would go nova, oh, about fifty years ago. We began evacuations, and met such resistance! So many wanted to stay here, saying that the scientists might be wrong, that there was still plenty of time, that they did not want to uproot their families to bring them to a new world. There were twenty years left, with reports pouring in of our successful new colonies in other systems, and still they dithered. Until there was only ten years left, and more than half the population unmoved! And then five years, and then one. When the sun finally begun to swell with its own death, there were not enough ships. Some did not return from the evacuation, some did not carry as many passengers as they could have."

The Doctor said cautiously, "You're lucky you didn't start fighting a war over the ships."

"They did fight, oh, it was abomination! Different factions fighting over the remaining ships, fighting to leave, even fighting to exclude others based on the most trivial of differences! And at the end, there was a great quilling."

"A great what?"

Tho'Po turned, rippling his long body backwards. He pointed back to the cliff, and the Doctor went to it and looked over.

The cliff overlooked a plain. His eyes jumped first to the pattern of great smoking blast marks in the centre of it, the tell-tale spoor of chemical rockets. Then he looked closer, and saw figures lying here and there on the grass. Humanoid, and too still. One of the ones closest to him looked like a woman, whose arms and back were covered with a thick pelt of reddish-brown spines.

"Is that quilling?" he asked, pointing at the body.

"Yes. The quills are used for telepathgestion, for the telepathic absorption of thoughts. We swept over the battlefields and said, if we cannot save your flesh, we will save your minds! And then we - took them, shared the memories of those of our own too injured to take lift stress, and fled."

The Doctor's dark eyes narrowed. "You ate their minds?" he said with revulsion in his voice.

"They were going to die, we had no space for them! They were too dangerous even if we did have space, they would have attacked the other refugees, would have attacked us! At least this way some of them, some part of them, would go on."

"Who is us?" asked the Doctor. "Are you not native to this planet?"

Tho'Po lay his head down on the ground as though in exhaustion. "We are the Reflectionists. Our names are as many as our forms. We project our essences between the stars in charged energy fields, and we find ourselves reborn in alien flesh: the mentally blank, or the newly dead, or the just-born are our hosts. We grow and learn in that alien culture, and eventually build a communication device to allow us contact with our Source. Sometimes we are a secret society, sometimes we are a ruling elite. Always, we talk, and we share, and then we move on, and leave the world a better place for our being there. And when we die, we cry out to the Universe, that we may warn Heaven and Hell. For our souls are great and fierce and proud."

The alien flicked the tendrils along his back straight into the air for a moment. "When the last ships were being loaded, I stayed behind. I am very large, as you can see. With the weight saved by not taking me, six of my sons and daughters could go. And they did. They took my memories with them, and so they will go on. They are far more of me than this little pip of flesh. I do not die, only this dies."

Tho'Po raised his head, and the light was suddenly painfully bright. "You should go, traveller. Remember me!"

The Doctor turned to see the clouds fleeing the horizon, as the sun rose too hot, too close. A searing wind started to blow, and he knew that it would burn this planet down to bedrock. He stepped into the shadow of the TARDIS, and it was like going from daytime to night. But even then, with the door half-opened, the Time Lord paused.

"I could never fit through that door," said Tho'Po, answering the Doctor's unvoiced thought. "Go!"

The door slammed, and with a wheezing thunder the TARDIS dematerialised. Tho'Po stared at the space where it used to be with an expression of delight, ignoring the smouldering of his fur.

"Well, that actually was a travel machine. And here I thought he was just another madman, dreaming that he would escape. A surprise! Wonderful!" And he laughed as the flames came roaring down and blasted him into light.


End file.
